This anthology of the writings of Sis. Ray Walker (1923-2012) represents only a fraction of the output of a remarkable woman, who made a multi-faceted contribution to the Christadelphian community. Equally at home with the pen as with the paintbrush, Ray was both artistically and verbally gifted, and was also endowed with a sharp and retentive mind, which she applied to everything to which she put her hand. An art teacher, a hard-working wife and mother, a generous hostess, an energetic ‘campaigner’, and an eagle-eyed magazine editor, she managed still, throughout her long life, not only to prioritise her appreciation and understanding of the Bible, but also to make time to share her study-based enthusiasms and insights with others by means of the printed word.

The thirty-nine chapters of this book have been selected as a means of characterising and preserving the special flavour of their gifted author’s studies of the Word of God – the volume that she loved so much, and to which she devoted her careful attention to such a large degree. For almost a quarter of a century, Ray contributed, not merely as the Production Editor, but also as a regular writer, to the pages of the Bible Student magazine, where her articles were some of the most imaginative and thought-provoking pieces ever published. She contributed also to the magazine’s successor, the New Bible Student, and the present anthology contains material from both of these long-out-of-print sources, originally published between 1970 and 1996.

History, theology, philosophy, ethnology and other disciplines are brought skillfully to bear on the Bible in there intriguing chapters, and the reader is guaranteed and intellectual ‘treat’. There are also some challenged in store as the author manages convincingly to blow away a number of errors and preconceptions…